Pages

Friday, October 13, 2017

Help Save SlideShare! Bring Back Reupload

I, and several other "Power Users" of SlideShare, have continued to pursue this issue. See the latest exchange on the topic with "Jeff" of the SlideShare customer service team that I have added today (10/2118) at the end of this thread, just before the comments.

SideShare, the popular slideshow hosting service, has 38 million registered users and gets 70 million unique visitors a month. If you are one of those users or visitors, you can help save SlideShare from itself by bringing back REUPLOAD, an essential feature that has recently been removed.

What is Reupload and Why is It So Important?

Reupload is (or was) a feature that allowed users to repost a revised version of a slideshow without changing its URL. Now that it is gone, the only way to revise a slideshow is to delete the original version and repost a new version with an new URL. Why does that matter?

Short-term error correction: We are all human. (Well, at least I am). We make mistakes. After you have posted your slideshow, you, or one of your readers, notices a typo, a wrong number in a calculation, or a broken link. You want to fix it, but meanwhile, you or your readers have bookmarked the original version, or Tweeted the link, or posted it on Facebook. When anyone follows those links or bookmarks, they will be taken to the original version with the error, not your corrected version. If you deleted the original when you made the correction, they won't find anything.

Long-term revisions: Sometimes I publish a slideshow on a topic of lasting interest, say, the economics of a soda tax. I posted this version of my soda tax slideshow in 2010. Last year, soda taxes were back in the news, so I posted this revised version. At the same time, I added the little yellow box on the front page of the original so that anyone who had the old link could find the new version. This week, I wanted to update it again to include the news of the failure of Chicago's soda tax, but with reupload gone, I can no longer steer anyone who finds one of the old versions to the newest version.

Classroom use: College professors and high school teachers use slideshows in their classrooms all the time. They include links to the slideshows in the printed or on-line curriculum materials they give to their students. What if the creator of the slideshow fixes an error or makes an update? Doesn't the teacher want them to find the latest version, not the old one? Without reupload, this won't happen.

What you can do

When I first contacted SlideShare about reupload, I got this non-responsive response:

Hi Ed,

Thank you for your email and I am sorry for any inconvenience this may
have caused. We're always looking for ways to improve the SlideShare
experience for our members. This sometimes means removing features that
aren’t heavily used to invest in others that offer greater value.
Please know we continuously evaluate how features and products are used,
and make adjustments accordingly to focus our resources on providing
the most value to our members. As a result, we have removed the ability
to re-upload documents to SlideShare.

As a workaround, you can upload a new file to SlideShare and delete the
current one. Please be aware that this means we will not be able to
transfer any views/likes/URL's to the new presentation.
Again, I apologize for the inconvenience and we greatly appreciate your
feedback. We have documented the issue in order to track additional
reports of the problem and for consideration to be addressed in a future
release.

If there's anything else I can help you with, please don't
hesitate to let me know.
All the best,

Allison
LCS Support Specialist - Mobile

This was a boilerplate response that other users have also gotten. It has been posted and reposted several times on discussion boards. I reopened the case and pointed out to "Allison" that it is nonsense. Reupload is not a feature that is "not heavily used." It is an essential feature that people use all the time. It offers great value.

"Allison" sent back this new reply that gave me a tiny bit of hope:

Thanks for your
feedback about removing the re-upload feature and I wish I was
personally able to do something myself however, please know I've sent
your concern to our product team for consideration. Taking member
feedback into account, we're always looking for ways to improve the
SlideShare experience. When many of our members ask for the same
improvement, we try our best to get it done. Though immediate action may
not be possible, your feedback will be incorporated into our ongoing
discussions about the direction of our design and development.

Again I
apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. If you need
anything else, please let me know and I will gladly assist.

So, if one of us complains, nothing happens, but if a lot of us complain, something might happen. Let's see if "Allison" is right. Let's send lots of requests to bring back reupload and see if they bring it back.

How to send a request to bring back reupload

SlideShare makes it pretty easy to ask for help. Here is how you do it:

Next, you will get a page that says, "Sorry, we couldn't find any information about 'Reupload' (unless, by the time you do this, they have added some information).

Go to the bottom of that page and click on the "Contact us" link

That will take you to a page where you can send a message to SlideShare help. Ask them to bring back reupload, and tell them why you care.

Thanks! If we all work together, we can save SlideShare from self-destruction!

Update: Matleena Laasko,a freelance trainer in Finland, is, like myself, a heavy user of SlideShare. She has written an extensive post lamenting the loss of reload and also other features, like the ability to download in ppt and failure of links to work when viewing on line. Her original post is in Finnish, but here is a link to a Google Translate version, which, despite the usual limitations, is good enough to give the general idea.

Further update (10/23): Here are more responses from SlideShare:

With regard to reupload:

"I understand your frustration and we did look at the usage of this
feature compared to the usage of other SlideShare features and found
that it wasn't as heavily used and we have currently removed the feature
due to the support cost.

However, we realize that this is a
useful feature for some power users and we are actively working on
making foundational improvements to our platform, which will make
building and supporting a feature such as re-upload much easier in the
near future.

Again I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."

So, it looks like a lot of casual users don't bother to update and reupload their posts, but it maybe is sinking in that those of us who are "power users" find it important. So far so good.

With regard to the inability to download ppt versions of the slides:

Thanks for reaching out about not being able to download the original
ppt file. What you've encountered is a known issue and I'm very sorry
for the inconvenience. Our engineering team is working on it but there's
no estimate as to how long that might take. We'll do our best to keep
you posted.

Since they used to allow downloads of ppts, it shouldn't take their engineering team all that much effort to put this ability back, you would think.

So, some progress, but I think it is worth keeping the pressure on. Anyone who has not yet sent their comments to SlideShare should still do so, rather than just being satisfied with these answers. We don't want this just to become a stalling tactic.

Further update (10/21/18)
Here is the latest exchange I have had with SlideShare on this issue. It is disappointing, since it still includes several bits of boilerplate from last year's conversations, but I think it is still worthwhile for everyone to write to them again, expressing our continued concern.

My question to SlideShare 10/20/18:

I used to be an enthusiastic user of SlideShare, a
"keynote author" with nearly 12k followers. Then it all came crashing
down when you took away the "reupload" feature. As I explained in a
presentation posted on Slideshare a year ago (https://www.slideshare.net/dolaneconslide/bring-back-reupload),
this feature is essential for my work and that of many other serious users.
Nearly 3000 people have viewed that slideshow. 33 of them have commented, and
many others have contacted me on Twitter. Please read the presentation and
especially the comments to see our concerns. None of us can understand why you
made this self-destructive change or why you are reluctant to restore it.Recently some users have contacted me to indicate there
may be some hope of bringing back the reupload feature. Can you give me any
updates on this? Can you give me any explanation of why you are reluctant to
restore it? Thank you for your attention to this issue.

Response the same day from "Jeff"

Hi Ed,

I understand your frustration, and I sincerely apologize
for any inconvenience. Please note that we did look at the usage of this
feature compared to the usage of other SlideShare features. Through that
investigation, we found that the re-upload feature wasn't as heavily used -
this is why the feature was removed.
However, we realize that this is a useful feature for some power users. We are
actively working on making foundational improvements to our platform, which
will make building and supporting a feature such as re-upload much easier in
the near future.
Again I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. If you need
anything else, please let me know and I will gladly assist.

Best Regards, Jeff
Customer Advocacy Representative

My rejoinder:

Dear Jeff: You say, "However, we realize that this
is a useful feature for some power users. We are actively working on making
foundational improvements to our platform, which will make building and
supporting a feature such as re-upload much easier in the near future."
That sounds very nice, except that it is exactly word for word the same
response that I got from someone named "Allison" a full year ago
(10/23/17). I wonder if you could spin this out a little for me.

(1) Can you send me some "proof of life" to let
me know that you are a human and not a bot. For example, can you tell me the
middle initial of the current president of the United States?

(2) Assuming you can answer Question 1, can you give me
some idea in human time of how far off "the near future" is?

(3) Can you explain why "foundational
improvements" are needed to restore the reupload feature, since you
offered that feature for years? It seems to me that if you turned it off, you
could just turn it back on again.Thank you, and I promise I will share your answers with
the community of SlideShare "power users" with which I have
corresponded on this matter.

Ed

Jeff, back to me:

Hi Ed, Thanks for getting back to me. I'll let you know
that I actually reviewed your previous case with Allison prior to responding to
you earlier. I don't see anywhere in that specific case where the response I
sent to you was by Allison in that conversation from a year ago. I was trying
to make sure to not send you information you had already received in that previous
case, so I apologize if you had previously received that information.
I assure you that I am, in fact, a human. In response to your specific
questions:
1) The middle initial of the current president of the United States is 'J'.
2) Unfortunately, we don't have any specific timeframe in place at this time.
For this reason, I am unable to provide any kind of range or ballpark figure at
this time. I'm very sorry for any frustration this may cause.
3) We are unable to disclose any additional details regarding the decision to
remove this feature, as that information is proprietary. All we're able to
share is what has previously been provided - we looked at the usage of this
feature compared to the usage of other SlideShare features. Through that investigation,
we found that the re-upload feature wasn't as heavily used, so we have
currently removed the feature due to the support cost.
I'm sorry that I can't provide additional details at this time. We sincerely
appreciate your patience and understanding. If anything else happens to come
up, please let me know.
Wishing you all the best, Ed!
Jeff

Me, back again to Jeff:

Thank you, Jeff, for your reply. I am sorry if my request
for proof of life sounded snarky, but I was genuinely concerned, since not only
I, myself, but other "power users" (PUs) have received boilerplate in
the past. I am sure you know that some companies, happily not yours, do use AI
rather than humans in their customer service divisions. I appreciate your
"J" response and the fact that you and Allison are talking to each
other.

I am evidently in error about getting the cited message
from Allison. I found it in an archive of messages exchanged with SS last
October, but the header and footer were cut off, so evidently the cited passage
is from a message sent to another PU. In any event, the point stands that I
(we, I should say -- the community of PUs who are communicating about this) are
concerned that there is no real forward motion despite the teasers. You (and
Allison) would probably be interested to read the whole thread from last
October, including my initial blog post explaining the reasons why reupload is
so important to us and the 30 comments. I plan to add this exchange to that
thread. You can find it here: http://dolanecon.blogspot.com/2017/10/help-save-slideshare-bring-back-reupload.html

BTW, as an economist, I appreciate your need to balance
the cost and benefit of a feature like reupload. I would hope that you would
rethink that balance. You should consider that material from your relatively
few PUs is widely disseminated on other social media and becomes one of the
ways that new users are attracted to your platform. If you treat us like
humans, you may find that you are rewarded for the costs and efforts.

30 comments:

Hi Ed, I'm a librarian working for the technical university library of Madrid, Spain [https://www.slideshare.net/biblioupm]. A few days ago, we discovered that the Slideshare reupload option had disappeared and are desperate. We usually upload and share our content via Slideshare to all our social media networks specifically because we can make modifications without changing the URL... we no longer know what to do, our entire social media strategy has been impacted. We've contacted LinkedIn and have still not received a reply. We'll post it with you when we do. Thanks for the details you´ve shared. Ignacio.

It's really a bad decision of Slideshare/LinkedIn to remove the re-upload feature. So there is no chance to keep the own presentation up-to-date (without losing the url link). I don't understand LinkedIn's excuse "We're always looking for ways to improve the SlideShare experience for our members."

Thanks for this. My to-do list this morning had been to replace a defunct link in two presentations and reupload them and it took me a while to soak in the fact that reupload had been removed as an "improvement" (wow!)

My entire content dissemination approach depended heavily on my ability to maintain updated documents and presentations on Slideshare and use those urls with the confidence that they will always point to the updated work. This is a major, major setback. As suggested by you, I have written to them, and I hope they see how important this feature is....

(I quote) When many of our members ask for the same improvement, we try our best to get it done. However, due to the large number of suggestions we receive, we usually don't provide a timeline.(end quote)

Additionally, it included two lines:

(I quote)In the future, you can send suggestions to us by clicking any "Feedback" link on the right side of your homepage. This will send your comments directly to the appropriate team.

You can also keep up with the latest product news and enhancements on our official blog, http://blog.linkedin.com, and check https://members.linkedin.com/we-heard-you for additional feature updates and fixes. It's our way of keeping you informed on all the exciting work we're doing behind the scenes.(end quote)

I visited the pages they referred to, and the "we heard you" page states it was last updated in December 2015....

I too have experienced the same problem with a report, I really cannot understand why they have removed this basic but essential feature. I also got a boilerplate response. It now means that I will have 3 copies of the same report (with minor changes) uploaded with 2 set to private so that I can view stats. I have used SlideShare for many years and regularly use the re-upload feature, just can't see what the reasoning is behind removing it, so frustrating!

Absolutely. I've started using hashtag #SaveSlideShare on Twitter, please help spread news about this problem on social media. I'm afraid a lot of people are just frustrated and give up without trying to do anything.

The decision by LinkedIn to remove the ability to re-upload presentations has got to be the stupidest decision I've come across, particularly since the idea is to stay "Linked In" to content you've uploaded, even if you make changes to it. How this decision "improves the SlideShare experience for Members" is beyond me. I shall be complaining about this until they fix it. Stupid, stupid, stupid idea!

Yeah, keep it up! I absolutely don't understand this. Same with loss of ability to download the slides in ppt format. If it is "Slide" "Share" what sense is there in it if your can't share the slides?

My paranoid side wonders if there is some conscious plan to destroy SlideShare, but that makes no sense. If they aren't making money from it, it would be cheaper just to shut it down or sell it to someone who wants to run it than to gradually make it useless.

Hi again I am Anonymous October 23, 2017 at 3:38 AM above :)Just received this response from Slideshare.

"I understand your frustration and we did look at the usage of this feature compared to the usage of other SlideShare features and found that it wasn't as heavily used and we have currently removed the feature due to the support cost.

However, we realize that this is a useful feature for some power users and we are actively working on making foundational improvements to our platform, which will make building and supporting a feature such as re-upload much easier in the near future.

o frustrated! We have 8 clients that have 2 presentations each that are updated monthly. So now I will have to upload 32 new presentations as well as update the embed code on our website in 32 places EVERY MONTH. This is beyond unbelievable!! I too sent an email to support, but will probably get the same response. Will keep an eye on this blog for updates and news.

I'm sorry for not having a quick answer about your issue. I've forwarded your message to another group for additional review and advice. We'll be in contact with you as quickly as possible but your issue may require additional research, which may extend your wait time.

You can always check the status of your case on LinkedIn:

1. Click the Me icon (your profile photo) at the top of your LinkedIn homepage.2. Select Help Center from the dropdown.3. On the Help page, click your profile photo in the top right, and then select View your cases from the dropdown to see the status of any cases you've submitted.

Just now, game of cat and mouse.... This is in reponse to me asking why there has been no reponse on Twitter since last year,

Hi Carol,

Thank you for your patience while I got a response. There should be a pinned post to direct member to the @LinkedInEditors account.

Again, taking member feedback about the removal of the re-upload option into account, we're always looking for ways to improve the LinkedIn experience. When many of our members ask for the same improvement, we try our best to get it done. Though immediate action may not be possible, your feedback will be incorporated into our ongoing discussions about the direction of our design and development.

I also had this issue and wrote them and got the "foundational improvements" line. I keep master decks up that I update all the time, and now I will have to sadly refer people to the Dropbox links to see the most current versions; I will at least update the descriptions accordingly. The site lost a lot of value for me when it discontinued email alerts when your friends posted updates (it's how I discovered a lot of great content, and how a lot of my initial views came in). This is beyond brain-dead though. It does make me wonder if there should be a push to an alternative that better cares for its users. Hell, some of us could probably create such an alternative.

I'm probably going to move all my presentations to Speaker Deck. I've done a quick test, and it allows re-uploading of edited content. The one minor downside is you have to convert your presentations to PDF format. The nice thing is there's no advertising. It seems to provide all the basic facilities I need.

I'm afraid Slideshare seem to have lost their direction and no longer understand their customers.

I'll check out Speaker Deck, not familiar with it. You comment about pdf is highly ironic--second behind removal of the reupload feature, there are many complaints about SlideShare's removal of the long-standing ability to download slideshows in ppt format. Now, although you can upload them as ppts, they can be downloaded only as pdfs. That is a big problem for producers of teaching materials, both academic and company training, since many authors like to encourage their clients to customize and update slideshows as they use them.

So, go figure: Just as SlideShare is at risk of losing users to Speaker Deck, it gets rid of one of the very features that previously made SlideShare a more attractive platform.

Search Ed Dolan's Econ Blog

My Textbook

Sixth edition of my textbook, Introduction to Economics published by BVT Publishing. A complete macro/micro principles textbook package in print or e-book versions at a fraction of the price of competitors. Click on image for more details.

TANSTAAFL: A Libertarian Perspective on Environmental Policy published by Searching Finance. This new Version 40.0 of my 1971 classic updates the discussion of a wide variety of environmental issues with new commentaries on climate change, energy policy, ecosocialism, and more. Click on image to purchase.

A Resource Center for Teaching Economics

The goal of this blog is to promote economic literacy. When I started it, I expected my readers to be mainly teachers of economics, and there are many of those, but it has also attracted a wider audience who simply want a better understanding of the economic world around them.

Many of the posts on this blog are republished with permission from the website of the Niskanen Center, where I contribute as a Senior Fellow, and from other web-based publications.